Currently, if a user wants to save certain information from the web, the user would have to go to the website, click through the web pages, and then bookmark the page in order to save information on the page. Essentially, the user has saved the access to the website. However, there are at least two problems associated with this approach because the Internet is a very transitory evolving environment. First, when the user needs the information again, the website may no longer be there. Second, even if the website is still there, the content of the website has changed such that the information of interest to the user may no longer be there.
Another approach to save certain information from the web is to open a clipboard-like application, such as Microsoft Word, and then the user may select, copy, and paste particular information of interest to the Word document. One drawback of this approach is that other information related to the information of interest is not moved to the Word document when such information is copied. The user would have to manually enter the citation, URL, author, and other contextual information related to the information retrieved, which is a time consuming and tedious task.
Yet another approach is to use an application like My Web offered by Yahoo! Inc., which allows the user to save a copy of the web page containing the information of interest. However, this approach saves both information the user is interested in and the information the user is not interested in. The user may be only interested in a particular section of a page or a particular image on a page. Another drawback of this approach is that once the user saves the page, the user may have lost the citation, URL, author, and other contextual information related to the information retrieved, unless the user enters such information manually.
In the above cases, one drawback is that the user is required to add metadata about the information acquired as a post-harvest action. There is no mechanism that allows the user to gather and annotate the information with metadata in real time. In addition, there is no mechanism to save the information in a structured manner. As a result, the user would have to organize and structure the information into useful formats after such information is collected. Therefore, there is a need to address such issues of the current art. Specifically, there is a need for a persistent saving portal for collecting information on the Internet.
Another drawback is that the user is provided with one style of presentation of the information, whether as a map, a list, a grid (chart), or a calendar view of the data content of interest. For example, when a user is comparing prices of an item on the Internet, typically a grid view (chart) is displayed showing the list prices of the item for different stores. However, the locations of the stores and time the user has to spend to drive to the stores may be some of the user's considerations in deciding to which store the user would go to buy the item. In this case, the user would have to go to the Maps application and search for the location of each store and get an estimated time for driving to that store. As another example, when a user is creating an itinerary for a trip, the user would have to go back and forth between the map, which shows the different locations the user wants to visit, and the comparison charts that show the prices of different airlines, hotels, etc. that the user is willing to pay, such switching back and forth between different views of the information allows the user to fully grasp the data content and to coordinate the different events. In both of the above examples, the processes are tedious and time-consuming. Therefore, there is a need for presenting information to users in a more effective and understandable manner.